Opinion: Columnists

Greenlee: Paying the price for parking

Boulder's progressive social engineers continue pondering their slide-rules and Ouija boards attempting to solve the city's perceived parking woes. They deem that parking is linked to its unachieved Climate Action Plan goals and its alternative modal daydreams. Give them some slack, however, because they've been wringing their hands about these issues for decades without messing things up too badly. Unfortunately the current gang of city council members just might be willing to implement a bunch of new measures that could really screw things up. Yet another study session is scheduled for October.

Over 30 years ago downtown Boulder merchants were up in arms about the city removing a large number of parking spaces downtown to accommodate building the Pearl Street Mall. Where would shoppers be able to park? Some questioned whether their businesses would survive. Would local shoppers be willing to pay for parking downtown when parking was "free" at the now extinct Crossroads Shopping Center? Would residents near downtown pay the price of having their neighborhoods inundated by downtown employees and other non-residents?

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Despite the predictable "can't do that...it's growth and we hate change!" faction of Boulder's controlled growth activists the city wisely adopted plans to accommodate new parking structures and gave neighborhoods an ability to discourage or eliminate many unwanted negative impacts of non-resident encroachment. New commercial buildings were required to provide on-site parking and frankly city planners did a pretty good job of accommodating the way most people access their workplaces and shopping needs. Of course city growth and redevelopment activities produced more commuting by car and the city's basic roadway infrastructure hasn't expanded all that much over the past quarter century. The city has thrown millions of dollars into expanded local and regional public transportation services although it's never been the beneficiary of improved bus service from the Regional Transportation District. The RTD has their own agenda and can't seem to be bothered with all those pesky alternative mode people in Boulder. So we seem to be where we were all those many years ago and the policy makers are getting restless.

Many of the latest attempts to address alternative modes and parking issues are not much different today than they were three decades ago. The city continues to believe the myth that over 10 percent of all daily commuting "trips" in Boulder are made on bikes and that offering more people "free" Eco-Passes will greatly expand the use of public transportation. As long as these fantasies persist further attempts to coerce citizens to conform to pre-determined and socially engineered mobility solutions will be forthcoming. One of the more outrageous proposals would be for the city to "put more teeth" into transportation demand management plans for new businesses by over-regulating which always produces unintended consequences. Utopian solutions rarely, if ever, produce anything but more problems, costs, and headaches.

A week ago Saturday, the Camera's editorial advisory board weighed in on the city's latest attempt to develop any new parking strategies. Judy Amabile rightly noted that Boulder's transportation dreamers haven't figured out that"...current alternative modes don't work for many people." Don Wrege suggested the transportation wizards can't ban people from driving their cars so their plan is "...to limit parking spaces to annoy them onto mass transit." He noted the city might be trying to "...strategize how to force people into transportation modes they don't want to use."

Perhaps the most insightful comments come from Lou Barnes who noted that "Boulder has issued a series of fantasy based transportation plans, all featuring a decline in auto use and imaginary inter-city alternatives." He notes the city "...has done all it can to deny its regional position and to annoy everyone trying to commute — its green righteousness degrading the environment".

One hopes council members will take these comments into consideration before launching yet again into that fantasy world they usually inhabit.

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story